Tuesday, June 17, 2014

Museum Cuts

Le Devoirreports that the Musées de la civilisation de Québec, after several years of budgetary cutbacks, will be cancelling two forthcoming major exhibitions, reducing its overall public programming, turning some staff positions into part-time ones. At the Musée de l’Amérique francophone, one of the MCQ's sites, no new exhibition will be offered this year.
Meanwhile, the Ottawa Citizen is reporting that at the Canadian Museum of History (formerly of Civilization) five staff are losing their jobs. Of those, one was a curator of archeology and the other of decorative arts, both focused on Quebec. The curator of archeology in question, Yves Monette, is to be even more precise a specialist of New France who has been publishing interesting work on how geochemistry can shed light on the production and distribution of imported and locally-made ceramics. In the Citizen article the museum's spokesperson attemps to reassure, saying that Quebec will feature prominently in the new permanent exhibition. I don't doubt it. But surely as far as the museum's research capacity in the field of New France is concerned, there's no way to positively spin this.